Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Author Quotes

Why will no man confess his faults? Because he continues to indulge in them; a man cannot tell his dream till he wakes.

Why do I not rather seek some real good - one which I could feel, not one which I could display? These things that draw the eyes of men, before which they halt, which they show to one another in wonder, outwardly glitter, but are worthless within.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

Why do people not confess vices? It is because they have not yet laid them aside. It is a waking person only who can tell their dreams.

Why do you ask, how long has he lived? He has lived to posterity.

Who shrinks from knowledge of his calamities but aggravates his fear; troubles half seen do torture all the more.

Who vaunts his race, lauds what belongs to others.

Whoever has nothing to hope, let him despair of nothing.

Whom they have injured they also hate.

Who-only let him be a man and intent upon honor-is not eager for the honorable ordeal and prompt to assume perilous duties? To what energetic man is not idleness a punishment?

Who benefits from the crime is the perpetrator.

Who can be forced has not learned how to die.

Who can doubt, my dear Lucilius, that life is the gift of the immortal gods, but that living well1 is the gift of philosophy?

Who can hope for nothing, should despair for nothing.

Who is everywhere, it is nowhere.

Who profits by a sin has done the sin.

Who scorns his own life is lord of yours.

While you teach, you learn.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

While we teach, we learn.

While we wait for life, life passes.

While you are beginning to call your mind your own, meantime apply this maxim of the wise: consider that it is more important who receives a thing, than what it is he receives.

While you look at what is given, look also at the giver.

Whereas we believe lightning to be released as a result of the collision of clouds, they believe that the clouds collide so as to release lightning: for as they attribute all to deity, they are led to believe not that things have a meaning insofar as they occur, but rather that they occur because they must have a meaning.

Wherever men on an equal basis to the sky went up after them, at equal intervals all the divine from all human Distant - From whatever point on the Earth's surface you look up to heaven the same distance lies between the realms of gods and men